The industry of doubt

We seem to have found the smoking gun showing the ultimate link between the people trying to show smoking doesn’t cause cancer and those claiming climate change isn’t caused by humans and happening now. Read below:

"Objective No. 1: To set aside in the minds of millions the false conviction that cigarette smokingemitting carbon dioxide causes lung cancerclimate change and other diseasesocean acidification; a conviction based on fanatical assumptions, fallacious rumors, unsupported claims and the unscientific statements and conjectures of publicity-seeking opportunists.

“Objective No. 2: To lift the cigarette from the cancercarbon dioxide from global warming identification as quickly as possible and restore it to its proper place of dignity and acceptance in the minds of men and women in the marketplace of American free enterprise.

“Objective No. 3: To expose the incredible, unprecedented and nefarious attack against the cigarettecarbon dioxide, constituting the greatest libel and slander ever perpetrated against any product in the history of free enterprise...

“Objective No. 4: To unveil the insidious and developing pattern of attack against the American free enterprise system, a sinister formula that is slowly eroding American business with the cigarettecarbon dioxide obviously selected as one of the trial targets."

End note: OK, this was a parody. Sort of. But this was the original memo written by the lovely spin doctors at tobacco giant Brown and Williamson smoking and health CO2 is life strategy to stop regulation on smoking.

We just replaced a few words – but we didn’t have to change much did we?

Fast forward 40 years and the same thing is happening today – this time with climate change, and a different industry – the fossil fuel industry whose very product (oil, coal, gas) is causing climate change.

It’s a different set of vested interests, but the strategy is the same: sow the seeds of doubt on climate science to stop regulation. Indeed, some of the climate deniers today are the same ones who argued against smoking/cancer links and/or second hand smoke.

Read all about it in the new Greenpeace report “Dealing in Doubt” available here for download.

Read it. Send it to your friends. Give it to your denier friends. Get the word out. Climate change is real, it’s happening, and it’s not going to go away - unless we take strong action.

Have you found the link between onerous and ridiculous environmental regulations and the fact that the poorest people in the world are no better off than they were 20 years ago? Do you think making light and heat less accessible to human beings is some sort of "good deed"? Do you totally love it when schools and hospitals can't afford fuel? Does it get you all tingly when another family isn't allowed to irrigate their land?
The sooner Greenpeace collapses under the weight of it's own hypocrisy and ignorance, the better off the world will be.